Previous Advice For Author Websites (and some new)
Filed Under: SF Business, Speculative Fiction, Web Design
This week, we continue our trend of answering questions from readers. Right now I have enough questions to get me through at least another week of posts. So BlueTyson asked in the post of questions last week:
Not for me, obviously, but ‘here’s how to consider doing a site about a book/author’?
I have written about this subject in great detail in previous entries, but it’s been a while since I’ve done so. I’ll break things down into a few points, with links to previous posts:
- First of all, hire me. I’m available, I work at a reasonable rate, and I know author websites well. Some of my clients include Mike Brotherton, Jay Lake, Rudi Dornemann, Shannon Page, and more.
- Plug out of the way, read this post: 10 things your website should have if you’re an author.
- When considering hiring a professional or even building it yourself, I’ve written this article advocating for good, standards-based design:5 Reasons Why SF/F Author Websites should be (more) standards-based
- At one time, your web presence was pretty much limited to a website and a blog. Now, we have microblogging sites such as Twitter and social networking sites such as Facebook. It behooves the serious author to maintain a presence on each one of these services–basically anywhere you might have fans, you should be. One of the things I have started doing is, rather than just building a website for an author, I attempt to develop a comprehensive online strategy for them to develop an audience and to maintain their readership. It’s about building relationships through the tools that are out there. Your website is important, but it’s no longer the only important thing.
- That may sound like a big time commitment, and it can be. A good example is Twitter, which can suck up time like nothing else. But you don’t need to post to Twitter 50 times a day to be available and accessible. Y0u need to answer questions directed at you, make a few new comments each day, and respond to direct messages. Share your work, yourself, and your interests on these services. One thing I do is make managing all these sites centrally very easy but installing plugins into the content management. No longer am I just the guy who builds the website. I also help you manage all these tools. A good designer/developer/web master will do so as well.
Remember: like any other business, you should think about what purpose a website serves, and what are your goals. Everything about your website should reflect those goals. It could be as simple as “to sell books” or it could be complicated like “to share what I know about web design, photography, and writing. Also, cool links. Also, to showcase my photography and my designs. To build readers for my fiction, but in general to make friends out there.” Okay–so that vision isn’t very coherent, and could use some focusing. I’m working on that. In the meanwhile, you’ll still get everything but the kitchen sink.
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